Page 10 of Second Chance

“Sorry I’m late,” he says as he slides into the booth beside Blake. He wishes they were sitting outside while the weather’s nice as it’ll get rainy and cold soon enough. Blake has weirdly strong opinions about eating outdoors, though, and Tony doesn’t want to get into it today. “Nice piercing. That new?”

“Yeah.” Blake grins, flicking the eyebrow ring back and forth. “My boss had a conniption about it. Worth it.”

Tony wrinkles his nose. “Why?”

Blake shrugs. “Professional workplace attire or something. It’s 2019 though. People should be able to wear whatever they want to work.”

“Hear, hear!” Lisa says from the other side of the table. She lifts her beer glass and takes a big sip. “One of my kids got sent home for wearing spaghetti straps the other day.”

“Ah, the great American education system.” Blake raises his glass in a mock-serious toast.

Tony’s never been entirely clear on what separates spaghetti straps from other straps, but they don’t sound like something worth sending someone home for, let alone a middle schooler who wouldn’t know better if theywerea problem. Tony had a phase in seventh grade where he only wore T-shirts for bands he had never listened to. No one sent him home about it, though they probably should have. He doesn’t know how Lisa does it, even if he were earning twice his current salary, he doubts he could handle taking thirty prepubescent nightmares and teaching them to become real people.

“There you are.” Daniel comes up from the bar. He settles into the seat next to Lisa and slides a beer and a burger across the table to Tony.

Tony closes his eyes in thankfulness. “You are my savior. Thank you.”

He’s about halfway through demolishing the burger when he manages to look up and realizes all three of his friends are watching him. He swallows a big bite. “What?”

“Rough day?” Lisa asks.

Tony shrugs. It was pretty par for the course, all things considered. Gianna’s maternity leave segued seamlessly into her return to college, and while they technically could afford to hire someone else at the garage, it would put them in a tight spot if any unexpected costs come their way this year. They crunched the numbers in January when Gianna’s due date was looming, and it was much cheaper for Tony, Pa, and Kyle to take on an extra shift here and there than it would be to have a new receptionist. After all, Ma comes in two days a week, and Gianna still does Friday afternoons and Saturdays. She has Lia with her, squalling away, but that might be good for business given how customers coo over her. Covering for Gianna’s absence means more shifts with all three of them, him, Pa, and Kyle, clamberingall over one another to get the jobs finished and the customers seen to. Adjusting to the new normal has been difficult, but Tony will get there.

At least, Tony thinks guiltily, he isn’t sleeping in the same house as a screaming infant most nights. Pa is.

“Didn’t pack enough for lunch.” He’s self-aware enough to know he’s not telling the whole truth but not willing to get into any more detail all the same.

“I knew we should have gotten some bananas yesterday,” Daniel says.

Tony shrugs. “We didn’t know I was staying over when we went shopping.”

He usually decides to stay over casually, depending on how late it gets and how comfortable it is on Daniel’s couch, in Daniel’s bed, or on one occasion, with Daniel wrapping his arms and legs around Tony because he didn’t want him to go.

Tony just happens to be in Rhinebeck late frequently, and Daniel has a very comfy couch.

Again, Tony becomes uncomfortably aware of Lisa and Blake’s eyes on him.

He takes a long sip of his beer to ignore it and then nearly spits it out. “Jesus. What is this?”

“Oh no.” Blake gives Daniel an accusatory look. “Did you get the new one on tap?”

“Yeah. I thought—this is Blake’s new beer, right? I mean, other Blake?”

Blake rolls his eyes. “Call him Blake G. That’s what our English teacher did.”

Lisa’s eyes slide over to Tony, willing him to get in on the joke. “Fair’s fair. Then you have to call this one Blake W.”

Tony takes another sip to hide the laugh and nearly chokes on the weird, yeasty cinnamon taste.

Not for the first time, Blake huffs, irritated. “I was the original Blake. It’s not fair. And Blake W sounds so dumb.”

He’s not annoyed. During the month that Blake G wore the same kind of flannel shirts and ripped jeans as him in sophomore year of high school and told everyone to call him Blake G, Blake W was briefly irritated, but only while Blake G pretended to do it on a dare. As soon as Blake G told him that the whole thing wasn’t a bit, that he was much happier as Blake G than he ever had been before he transitioned, Blake W was entirely on board and spent the rest of high school complaining loudly about how he should be known as the original Blake. This led to a lot of discussion about how Blake wasn’t Blake W’s real name anyway, but he’d gotten tired of people misspelling Baalkrishan and sweet-talked the school secretary into changing it on his forms though it wasn’t technically legal. The ensuing discussion usually derailed the conversation so thoroughly no one thought to complain about anything else to do with Blake G.

By now, the whole thing is mostly nostalgic.

Daniel looks between them, mildly confused but willing to go with it, just like he goes with Tony deciding to stay over all the time. He even started buying Tony’s favorite brand of prepackaged ham, though he thinks it’s bad for the environment. Daniel joined Thursday night drinks at Mike’s at some point in April when Tony wanted both to get mildly drunk and stay over at his place and, therefore, needed a designated driver. Tony’s friends apparently like him enough that it’s become a standing invitation.

Tony tries not to read too much into the way their lives have become so seamlessly tangled. He fails most of the time.

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